Thursday, August 21, 2008

Wikigroaning

Wikigroaning is an amusing way to point out the obvious bias of Wikipedia towards pop culture as compared to other subjects of serious academic discourse. Compare, for example, the length, incisiveness, and relative value to the general public of the Wikipedia articles on God and on Kevin Smith (don't worry, I had no idea who Kevin Smith was, either). Looking at the examples collected by Something Awful, I marvel both at the brevity with which many important topics are treated by Wikipedia authors, and at the level of detail devoted to completely irrelevant stuff like anime characters, storylines from computer game plots, or other ficititious items (cf. the respective articles on lizards and dragons, for example).

Here's one I found myself: Monopoly (economic term) vs. Monopoly (board game) - examples abound once one starts looking, and many hours of boring office time can be killed this way. Feel free to submit your own example in the comments.

(Found via Encyclopedia Dramatica)


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

tatsächlich: Dick Cheney's Wiki-Artikel ist um einiges kürzer als jener von W. Hmmm... Aber wenigstens sind beide länger als Gottes Eintrag ;)